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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Either things are firming up in the rumor department, or the same rumor is coming around again, but a week or so ago CanonRumors reported that Canon was working on two large-sensor video cameras; one with an EF mount, and the other a PL mount. Now Wide Open Camera is reporting the same thing, with almost identical details (mounts, pricing of around $15,000) though it also adds the possibility of 4K resolution, which, if true, could be very, very interesting. A 4K, PL mount camera that costs $15,000 would definitely give Sony problems, and may hurt ARRI and even RED.

And Canon has already shown a prototype 4K camera last year at the New York Canon Expo, so it's not like that's completely out of left field. It looks like it's going to be another interesting few months...

Does the 3rd of November have anything to do with this event? | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior
Some people are wondering if the Canon Hollywood event in November is related to the Project Imagin8ion project with Ron Howard.
Maybe, though I'm not sure that this would count as "an historical global announcement," and why make a secret about something that's already been announced?

Friday, September 16, 2011

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians...

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be "replaced" by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
-George Lucas

At August's Pub Night at Rule Boston Camera, Frontline's Director of Broadcast, Tim Mangini spoke on the subject of making documentaries under tight deadlines. Specifically, he talked about issues encountered during the production of two episodes; one on the Egyptian uprising, and the other on the death of Osama bin Laden.

His story of the production of the Egypt episode, Revolution in Cairo - Frontline, Season 29, [view it online: Frontline] begins with a producer flying into Cairo, while production crews were already on location, but they were running short of media and other supplies.

Tasked with furnishing these supplies immediately, Tim's team first considered renting and buying the equipment from stores in Dubai, as the producer had a two hour lay-over there on the way to Cairo. This idea was quickly abandoned - partly because it was two in the morning in Dubai - in favor of sending someone from Boston that day with the gear. This posed other problems, because they knew that reporters and photographers were being stopped and arrested at the Cairo airport. Arriving with a collection of professional gear might cause problems.

Their solution was to buy a couple of tripods at Best Buy, along with hard drives and media, while from Rule Boston Camera they rented microphones and some other gear they needed. One of the AP's had volunteered to take the gear, and it was carefully packed into suitcases bought at Target.

We made it feasible that she was doing a really big home movie project. A really big project.

They also had to go through all with gear with her so that she would be able to explain what it was if she was questioned about it.

They also realized that the original flight had her scheduled to spend five hours at two in the morning in a country that frowned on woman traveling alone. It was felt this might increase the danger for her, so the flight was shifted back to the next morning. Fortunately, everything went without a hitch, and the gear arrived safely.

Tim Mangini at Boston Rule Camera

The next phase of the project was dealing with the variety of material that came back from the field. This was another challenge because the material was arriving without the producers or cameramen who shot it. All of the material had to be ingested and then reviewed by the editors. To make the process more efficient, one crew handled ingesting the material into Avid, in preparation for the editors that then had to review all the material.

I think we saw almost every format known to man. We had Canon 5D, we had Canon HDV, we had Flip cameras, camera phones, we had cell phone footage, we had FCP material of every flavor and stripe, we didn’t know what it was when it came in, we had to figure it out, we had raw QuickTimes, and then we had footage shot at 23.98, 25i, 25p, 29.97, 25F and some of it was 720 and some it was at 1080.

Frontline is mastered in 1080i, 59.94, and all the material was converted using either dedicated video conversion hardware, or by using Avid's built-in conversion. In previous releases the Avid video conversion was considered rather poor, but now Tim feels that for many materials Avid does a superior job, preserving cadence and doing a clean conversion.

One important part of the process was developing their own naming convention and getting everyone to follow it.

We used the folder structure as our bin structure, so we could give that to any editor working on the project and they could find anything. They were organized by date, by shooter, by producer, and by subject. By doing that up front, there was a lot less scratching of heads in the editing room

Tim showed a powerful segment from the show where Muhammad Abbas, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, addressed the crowd during a protest rally.

Revolution in Cairo - Frontline, Season 29

On the Friday before air, the first cut was completed, and the senior staff looked at it and decided there was a problem:

They said “you know what?” he’s too sympathetic. You saw him there sort of glowing. [...] we thought, there’s another side to the Muslim Brotherhood, we made them seem a little too warm and fuzzy. What do we have that shows the other side?

They went back through the footage and found a clip of an interview with Abbas asking him if the Muslim Brotherhood would recognize the treaty with Israel, and he replied by asking, "if a thief comes at night and steals a room of your house, what would you do?" By adding that element, they felt that it added an extra dimension to the program.

Tim Mangin

One questioner asked about budgets, noting that it almost seemed as if they were working with an unlimited budget.

The way we do documentaries, we have very small teams, you’re talking about one, two, three people. It’s not like film production where you go an extra day, there’s another million out the door. So the economies work in our favor, usually.

We had been working on the show for some time, it had been in the pipeline for a while. The first segment was called Fighting for bin Laden. [A producer has been] imbedded with al-Qaeda operatives, and when it began to look like his life was in danger, he decided to get out of Dodge. We’d already gone through a full set of fixing and changing, and then on Friday at 5 o'clock, the producer came in and said we have problems, we have to make changes...

They spent the next day and a half making changes, and then on Sunday evening Tim went to make a plane reservation to take the tape down to PBS. This was around 10pm, and he happened to check the news and saw a headline "Bin Laden shot."

He then showed a clip from the original episode of an expert talking at length about how the US had failed to capture bin Laden. "So we knew we had a bit of a problem," said Tim.

There followed a lot of texting, but "believe it or not, we had the framework of a new show by 2 o'clock on Sunday morning," and 46 hours from the time they heard bin Laden was dead, they went to air with an extensively updated episode.

These changes involved editing the first half of the program, and making a completely new segment to replace the second half of the program. Here they were more than a little lucky because they already had another episode scheduled for air in a couple of weeks, called "Kill or Capture." They called the editor of that segment - who was based in London - to see what he might have, and he said he had an entire sequence on the cutting room floor that he thought they might use. This created a new problem; how to get the content from London to Boston.

First the editor uploaded a low-res QuickTime video via the internet. They'd originally thought they might have to do some extensive editing to the piece, but seeing the low-res video made it clear they would be able to use the segment mostly as it was. However they still didn't have the video.

They then put in operation multiple delivery plans to get the actual video to Boston. First, the editor in the UK had to conform the piece and run it across London to arrange the transfer via fiber cable to Washington, where it would then be sent via satellite to Boston.

Meanwhile, a courier was bringing the video by plane, but he literally missed the flight by five minutes!

To top it off, they had lots of problems transferring it via satellite, and spent several hours - and a sizable amount of money - getting that to work. Fortunately, they solved their satellite problems, and by 6 o'clock of the day of broadcast they had a final screening with all the senior executives. They then had an hour to make some editorial and technical fixes.

The editorial changes were being done in one room, and the technical changes were being done in a second room. Tim explained that things nearly fell apart during that hour because the editorial fixes got hung up on something and they stopped working on it. "You have to keep your eye on the tape," he said. With 15 minutes to go, they still had half an hour of work to do.“I must say, I was calm, every moment.”

At 8:30 Tim called a halt to the changes and ran the tape over, just in time. Fortunately, there were no major problems in the program!

Tim runs the tape over, just in time

Tim added that they did go back and make all of the changes for subsequent broadcast.

Tim noted that there's a tension with editorial, "because you need to rush them, but you can’t rush them." His solution is to create a schedule, define the deadlines, and work within that. "And then it changes!" he added. He also noted the importance of having correspondents that really know their subject matter.

Many times, when we’re able to pull something like this off, it’s not from whole cloth. Because we can’t do it that fast. It's because we have deep resources; people, footage, history, that we can draw from. If there’s any message that I’m giving out today, it’s really all about resources. You need to have the equipment to do it, and the knowledge about the equipment so that the equipment doesn’t become your enemy.

The web is buzzing with the news that Canon is having an event in Hollywood on November 5th. What could it be? The 5D Mark III or a large sensor video camera? Or something else?

If I had to guess, I'd think large-frame video camera, but I have no information to really confirm that. If it is, my bet is that it will be expensive; well out of my budget (probably Sony PMW-F3 prices, or more.)

Guess we have to wait and see (and endure another couple of months of rumors!)

NEGATIVES; Not good with wide angle lenses. Some lenses work better with it than others. Not parfocal. Slight image softening. Close up focus changed. Be careful with old Nikon lenses with the bit of metal that sticks out. It can damage your filter and if you are not careful like me…your camera too!

I wish I could say the Zeiss blows the Bower out of the water. But the truth is, if I was looking for a high speed, budget 35mm, the Bower is a great option and really makes one wonder why the Zeiss is so much more expensive. I think the Zeiss caters more toward the professional HDSLR video shooter with it’s reliability and slightly higher image quality.

10 Reasons to hate the Sony FS100 | El Skid | Wide Open Camera
After spending a few weeks shooting with the Sony NEX-FS100, El Skid comes up with a list of ten reasons to hate the camera (he promises a list of things to like about it too)

8. Kit lens.
The kit lens is actually very good. 18-200 is a very useful range for video work. It’s slow as hell though and you have to change the iris via a rancid scroll wheel on the side of the camera that reminds me of the bad old days of the PD150. It’s unresponsive, lacks feel and makes you feel like you have no control when shooting. I hate it. The focus ring on the lens is a weird fish too. It seems to make no sense, you easily overshoot focus, then suddenly you’re having to crank hard just to get where you need to be. The lens happily extends all by itself if you point the camera down. Oh dear.

"We noticed a lot of the videos that were uploaded to YouTube could use some polish, some basic video editing," Toff said. "We noticed a lot of videos that had extra footage at the beginning that could have been trimmed off, or some footage at the end that could be trimmed off, a lot of videos that were really shaky and could use stabilization, and dark videos, etc."

D|Matte | DFocusSystem
The D\Matte is a budget Matte box designed for DSLR users. It should be available shortly and they just updated their product page:

The D|Matte was specifically designed with DSLR lenses in mind featuring two 4 x 4 filter slots, one rotating and includes an adjustable French flag. Available as a clip-on model only at launch, however an adjustable, swing away, rail mount will be available in the summer as an optional upgrade.

Review: GenArts Sapphire Edge | Scott Simmons | StudioDaily
Scott was initially skeptical about this package of looks and effects that works with Final Cut and Vegas, but he actually was won over by it's features and quality, with some reservations:

I still think it's a little pricey for what is essentially a package of canned looks and lens flares. But the quality of the effects becomes evident once you dig in. For some, the options that let you make these effects your own will justify the price. Watch the demo and see if Edge could lend you a hand in your studio.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro "Gotchas" 1 | walter biscardi, jr.
| Vimeo
"For the Final Cut Pro editor migrating over to Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5, there are a few quirks within the application that will drive you absolutely bonkers. Here's a few of the "gotchas" that got me and how to avoid them."

UnderWaterRealm Blog WEEK 31 - 5DmkII vs EX1 Underwater!
| Realm Pictures
A shootout between the Canon 5DmkII and the Sony EX1 underwater! It starts with an interesting discussion about shooting a scene underwater. The Canon loses due to usability, but also because depth-of-field isn't really necessary underwater, BUT, they don't think either camera will work for their final production!

Rumor: Canon 4K S35 Video Camera Announcement By November 2011 | Jared Abrams | Wide Open CameraCanonRumors reported hints of this last week, and now here comes what appears to be a different source confirming a Canon large-sensor video camera (then again, someone that read the original CanonRumors article might have just repeated it to Jared!) Interesting detail about price; ~$15,000.

Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul | SellingYourFilm
This eBook by filmmaker and consultant Jon Reiss and inbound marketing strategist Sheri Candler is available in several formats, and is free - in some of those - until October 1st.

How to best use twixtor for extreme slow motion | Salomon Ligthelm | PhilipBloom.net
Guest blogger Salomon Lighelm explains how to get the best results from the software Twixtor, both during shooting, and in post. He also notes that he thinks it works best in After Effects:

Consider using an aspect matte to hide warping. I often use an aspect ratio of 2.4:1 in my work as a lot of my warping happens at the edges of my shots, thus a matte will hide the really bad sections. One instance of this was a shot in the short of mine called [Fo'tis'ma], where my good friend Franzwa is taking off from a ledge [Its the tight - slightly angled down shot at 34s]. The warping on his hand was REALLY bad – especially because the shot was rather tight and he was coming down at such a pace. It was because of that shot not working at 16:9 that I decided to make the whole piece 2.4:1

Sony FS100: Shooting Outside | Brandon Vincent | Blog
Brandon documents his experience shooting an outside event with the Sony NEX-FS100. After noting that the lens he used for the day "was a piece of garbage" he goes on to report that the days shooting gave him a new perspective on the detachable handle:

I’ve avoided the side handle that attaches to the camera because of how horribly cheap it feels. I wouldn’t trust it with anything heavier than what normally attaches to the camera but since I knew I’d be running light I thought I’d throw it on and give it a chance. I really had no other choice anyway.
I was immediately surprised by how well it worked.

He also notes a problem that appears to be caused by the Fotodiox Nikon F mount adapter that he was using.

IN THE CUT: The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan | Jim Emerson | IndieWIRE
A look at the editing of an action scene in The Dark Knight. As interesting as this is, I'm a little hesitant to ascribe the problems in the editing and sequencing to the lack of skill of the Director and/or Editor. Rather, I suspect it's what happen when you have finite budgets, complicated sequences, and the necessity of making small or major changes after the sequence has been shot.

Buy the Citizen Kane Blu-ray | Fred Kaplan | Slate
Kaplan argues that the new Bluray of Citizen Kane is a startling improvement over the previous DVD release, partly because the original DVD was over-cleaned - removing not just dirt but also film grain - but also because the film was redigitized from better source materials. The new release adds a new depth to the film:

the Blu-ray reveals the slight differences in lighting that impart a visual mood to the different narratives: some starker, some warmer, some more intimate, some more hollow. These contrasts were muffled, flattened out, in earlier versions. This is a more richly emotional Kane.

The Replay XD 1080 really seemed to perform the best in the tests; it "won" the exterior sunlight, interior and night shots, while it probably came in second in Wind Noise Reduction. The Drift seemed to perform the worst in most categories, though it's exterior video seemed very colorful - over-saturated - asnd some people might find that appealing. The Contour image quality may have been a bit better than the GoPro, but the audio from the GoPro seemed better than the Contour.

I might have given the interior shot to the Contour because it didn't over-expose the exterior parts of the frame, but the Replay definitely performed well in all categories. The full report will appear in November's Hot Rod.

PHYR Resolve HD | PHYX
A new Mac application from PHYX for up-rezing video footage from standard def - or other resolutions - to HD 720p or 1080p. Features include:

reduces noise and pixelation artifacts

batch list function

interlaced footage converted to progressive format

It's $49.95, and though it works on Snow Leopard and Lion, they note that it encodes video twice as fast in Lion.At least one person has wondered whether it's a good idea to use the name Resolve, when the color grading tool DaVinci Resolve is often simply referred to as Resolve.

Litepanels Files Complaint with the ITC | IKAN
IKAN has published a short statement about the complaint that Litepanels has filed with the United States International Trade Commission against IKAN and 15 other companies that import and sell solid state and LED lighting devices and components:

IKAN will oppose the complaint. Interested parties may contact the U. S. International Trade Commission and voice their concerns in this matter. For more information, please contact:
James R. Holbein, Secretary to the Commission, U.S. International Trade Commission, 500 E Street, S.W., Washington, D.C.20436, telephone (202) 205-2000.

Review of the SmallHD DP4-EVF 4.3" High-Resolution Monitor & EVF | Ron Risman | CameraTown
A lengthy review that finds the DP4-EVF to be notably larger and heavier than the Zacuto EVF, which causes some problems when working in the field. However, the LCD is 4.3 vs the Zacuto's 3.2", which does make it a better small monitor. He likes the layout of the controls better than the Zacuto but noted a delay when going into record mode when used with the Canon 5D II, which switches the video output format when it goes into record. The Zacuto did not exhibit such a long delay.

With the SmallHD DP4-EVF you'll get an excellent 4.3" monitor that makes it much easier to pull focus while recording, has the flexible mounting advantage, and the ability to use the loupe to turn it into an EVF. Of course, the extra screen size makes the unit bulkier as an EVF for anything but tripod or shoulder rig work.

the real growth area at the moment lies within the pro camcorder segment and large sensor pro camcorders are going from strength to strength. In the first half of 2011, the segment accounted for almost a fifth of market volumes in EMEA, growing the market by nearly 20% when compared to the same time last year. And this increase comes from just four products.

It ends with a hint of a question; what will the DSLR makers do in response to all the large sensor video cameras that are appearing?

"Directing is really easy. It’s just inspiring everyone else to give their best, and then you put your name on it."
— Guillermo del Toro(via: martinjablonski)

The new version of Flash Media Server will repackage content automatically for Apple’s mobile products, which lack Flash support, and implement HTTP Dynamic Streaming or HTTP Live Streaming, both of which are compatible with iOS.

As much as this article might paint it as a capitulation by Adobe, it's important to note that this is only adding support for video streaming. Flash is really multiple technologies including an interactive media technology, and a streaming video technology. A lot of sites use Flash video to stream video to their users, and this update provides support for that, but the Flash authored interactive menus, ads and games; they still won't work, and that probably won't change unless Apple allows Adobe into the iOS garden.

In real terms it means that newspapers in the UK are very very confused about the value of multimedia content and what they should pay for it or who should pay for it. You have to consider that the time and therefore cost of producing a short three minute package to accompany a printed article is extremely expensive; especially when you consider the throwaway value of all content on the web.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Panasonic announced the AVCCAM Importer back in April, but only just got around to releasing it. The AVCCAM Importer is actually a component that adds support for direct playback of AVCCAM files within QuickTime. With it installed you can play AVCCAM files inside the QuickTime player, or even within Final Cut Pro 7, without conversion.

The really cool thing is; it's free, and it seems to work for AVCHD files from other manufacturers as well.

I downloaded and installed the plug-in without trouble. The installer does force you to restart the computer, but that's the only hitch. You need Snow Leopard or better, and Final Cut Pro 7.0.3.

Once installed, I tried it out with some video shot using the Panasonic AG-HMC70P camcorder. The movies opened in the QuickTime Player, and played well; though the performance during playback from the SD card was similar to the performance I get when playing .mov files from my Canon DSLR card i.e. it tends to hiccup a bit.

I tried the files in Final Cut Pro 7, and they previewed and could be placed into the timeline. Final Cut did require rendering before playback in the timeline; much like using Canon .mov files within Final Cut Pro.

I then tried some files from a Sony HXR-NX5U. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but they worked just the same as the Panasonic AVCHD files.

QuickTime Info for Panasonic file

QuickTime Info for Sony file

If you need to quickly preview or even edit some video, this component is really useful. I don't think I'd use this as a way to edit files in Final Cut Pro 7, but as a way to quickly review things, this is cool. Why couldn't someone have done this a couple of years ago?

Note that Panasonic says it may not work with other manufacturers files.

IBC 2011: JVC 4k camera, Sony F65 and more | Philip Bloom | Philip Bloom
Sony announced the price of the F65 4K camera last week, but JVC showed a prototype 4K camera at IBC that may be announced early next year, and may cost less than $10,000. It's about the size of a handicam, and probably won't have all the bells and whistles of the F65, but could this be another game changer?

1/2″ 4k CMOS sensor.

Records at 144 mb/s AVCHD. To do this it has FOUR SDXC slots onboard (!) to record the 4k image split into 4 quadrants. There are also 4 HDMI sockets to externally record 4 streams. Bundled software with it joins the 4 quadrants on ingest before going into your NLE.

Video Showing The New Sony SCL-Z18X140 Zoom Lens for the F3 | Cinescopophilia
back when it was introduced, Sony hinted/promised lenses for the PMW-F3 that would take advantage of the rocker switch on the camera, and help turn it into a "real" videocamera, and now they are showing one of them at IBC. It isn't cheap at about $12,000.

Top of the list is is enhanced AAF round trip support. A new Format popup in the Export Session dialog (that appears when you click the Export button in the Conform page) lets you choose whether to export XML or AAF (previously it only expoted XML). Choosing AAF generates a file for Media Composer that can be directly relinked to the media you output from Resolve.

A Week in Rumors | CanonRumors
Now it looks like no new DSLR in 2011, though this story has gone back and forth several times. It seems Canon is following RED's new strategy:

“Canon will announce a new camera when it’s done, and not a minute before”.

The Rollercoaster Ride of Landing a Film Crew Gig | Evan Luzi
| The Black And Blue
This post appears to be about the ups and down and mental torment you go through before working on a movie job, and how's it's "fun"....except that the conclusion suggests that if you thought that was hard, just wait until you actually have to do the job; you ain't seen nothing yet!

In essence, you fall in love with the rollercoaster, just as you fall in love with the film industry before a job. All the opportunities lie ahead of you and you enjoy every loop, corkscrew, and turn of the process each more than the last.

3D is an expensive gimmick and the truth was exposed earlier on this year when Nintendo brought out their 3DS a hand held 3D games machine that did not need glasses to watch 3D and what did all the kids do…switch off the 3D because it was too hard to consentrate on the game with 3D activated.

...before turning into a commentary on the cost cutting that is effecting much of UK television.

It’s all down to cutting costs which means cutting corners in productions or worse losing good television footage all in the name of what…so the share holders are happy at the top of the tree but once you fillet out the flesh of good television you are left with the bones are you surprised people are turning away from watching television.